Shorten thanked for helping disabled son

If it wasn't for Bill Shorten, Tammy Newson reckons her son would still be living almost blind but without disability payments.

Or worse, the former miner might not be here.

The opposition leader personally intervened to get 32-year-old Nick - who suffers from multiple sclerosis - onto the disability support pension, after his mother battled Centrelink for seven-and-a-half months.

Ms Newson says her son was suicidal and with five per cent sight in one eye and 25 per cent in the other, couldn't hold down work.

"Every job that he put in for, as soon as he did the test, or told them that he had MS, they just wouldn't look at him," she told AAP in Burnie on Friday.

Fed up with her local Liberal MP Brett Whiteley, who she says wouldn't meet her, Ms Newson went to a Shorten forum a few months ago.